Marco Argenti

Marco Argenti, senior vice president of developer experience and marketplace at Nokia, displays some of his passion for the development landscape around Windows Phone.

Nokia is teaming with Microsoft to recruit developers to the Windows Phone platform. Nokia plans to give away 25,000 new Lumia 800 smartphones based on the Microsoft Windows Phone operating system to developers, and the cell phone company, in conjunction with Microsoft, hopes to sign up 100,000 developers between now and June 2012. At the Nokia World 2011 conference in London Oct. 27, Marco Argenti, senior vice president of developer experience and marketplace at Nokia, said the phone giveaway is happening immediately. "There are literally trucks outside right now full of Windows Phones," said Matt Bencke, general manager of developer and marketplace at Microsoft. "This is one of the largest seeding programs I've ever heard of," said Brandon Watson, senior director of Windows Phone 7 development at Microsoft. Nokia and Microsoft are not just throwing the phones at any warm body, but rather are focusing on committed developers, Watson said. "We're not just wantonly handing out phones; that's what gets phones on eBay," he said.

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.